Life With Nine Kids

Tuesday, December 3, 2013

Another Kid...

I’ve heard people say that if you wait to have kids (you
know until you are “ready” and financially secure) then you’ll never have them.Well as it turns out the same goes for goats.

I was supposed to get goats 12 years ago. They were a
birthday present from my husband. He was clearing land to build me a goat pen for them and everything,
but I told him to stop. We were possibly moving and we weren’t ready for goats.
Every year thereafter goats have been discussed and a couple of those years we have
come realllly close to getting goats, but we always came to our senses. We kept
waiting for the right time. This fall we started to talk serious goat talk again. We want
some brush clearing yard helpers and mowers, and we are looking for raw milk.
We finally made a practical use plan for having goats around. (Things to consider: breeds, sexes, milking, feeding, shelter, fencing, what to do with babies, how to breed them if we don't want a male around -renting a stud goat-, Etc.)

Even so, goat shopping was not on the top of our priority
list as the washing machine and refrigerator simultaneously broke, the holiday season is here,
we have a 5 month old baby, and we are already taking on new expenses this month for heating and the growing food budget... now purchasing organic eggs at
the grocery store AND buying feed for
our chickens because it is cold and our hens are on winter break so they are not
laying right now. We could come up with at least six more reasons why we
shouldn’t get goats. I really started the whole thing up again when in October I told Ricky nostalgically that
this year would be the perfect year for goats because next year Charlotte would
be 18, and I promised her that we’d have goats someday. A promise I made to her
when she was just a bright eyed kindergartner. He listened thoughtfully and
started making goat shelter plans that same morning. In the meantime Craigslist hadn’t yielded anything
promising in the way of actual goats. We had very specific requirements and not a lot of time to fool around at an animal auction. For
one we wanted Nigerian Dwarf goats for milk flavor and a smaller size goat that fits well on our land and backyard with little human kids, but were also
interested in the Saanen breed. We also didn’t want to pay a lot. Goats have
really gone up in price since the last time we seriously looked. The goat talk quieted down...

Since we were going to be further out in the country for two days over
Thanksgiving I casually said we should look around for goats. The day after
Thanksgiving Ricky looked online and sure enough we found a
Dwarf Nigerian mama with a Dwarf Nigerian Saanen cross baby doe. The owners didn't want to see the mama go but were selling her because she was very “docile” and the
other goats were picking on her.My
grandma is a wheeler and a dealer so I asked her to call and negotiate a price
for us. She’s hilarious and of course did call for us and got us $30 off their
already reduced price (they claimed they had already gone down in price, and it was a good price). Grandma wasn’t pleased they wouldn’t budge more on price but we were happy enough. So we were on our way over hills and winding country roads to pick up new additions to our lives...

Charlotte, 17, and Dixie our very first baby goat. I promised Charlotte
we would have goats when she was in pre school and kindergarten. Promise
fullfilled!

I
fell asleep on the long ride home and Charlotte took my picture. I also
got peed on. It was a given though; someone was gonna get it.

We have no refrigerator (New one is on order) and technically a broken washing machine, but we have goats and we have each other. If we were to wait until everything was perfect would we EVER have gotten them??

Getting everyone to look at the same time in a photo has been more challenging than ever lately, and by lately I mean for at least a year. N...

Why I Write This Blog

I write for myself and I write for our kids. I write about life, farming, birth, kids, love, and more. These are the stories, thoughts, and feelings I want to remember. Reading back lets me relive so much and I want to be able to do that when the kids are grown. Writing is also therapeutic. It helps people sort out feelings and it is a great creative process! No matter who you are, or how well you might write, writing is good for you!

About Me

We have 9 kids ages 20 through one year old. Besides kids we have 4 dogs, 4 cats, chickens, turkey, goats, rabbits and geese. My husband and I are crazy about each other; we embrace traditional family roles, and obviously like having a houseful of kids. I'm into vintage/retro things, art, and starting new projects. I enjoy homemaking and farming. I'm a trained doula and home birth advocate and have had seven fantastic unassisted births. I have a intense passion for: being a good mom and wife, natural family living and child care, turkey farming, gardening, canning, homesteading, re-purposing, up-cycling, natural baby care, unassisted birth and midwifery. My hubby grew up on a farm (that experience comes in super handy) and has a degree in economics and a masters in finance. Our family is the most important thing to us and we just love our hectic kid-crazy life! I hobby blog a bunch because I enjoy writing; I also write here because I can save a blog as a pdf file and print them up as memories and stories from our life. I want to always have these memories, because so many do fade. I want my children to one day read about how much we love them and each other.